Mini big bangs created, according to articles in BBC News 8 November 2010 and ABC News in Science 9 November 2010. Scientists at CERN on the Swiss France border have set up an experiment that aims to re-create the universe as it was 13.7 billion years ago, moments after the Big Bang. They are using the Large Hadron Collider to smash the nuclei of lead atoms together at speeds close to that of the speed of light. The resulting mini-bangs generate “hot, dense subatomic fireballs” a million times hotter than the sun. David Evans from the University of Birmingham explained: “At these temperatures protons and neutrons (particles that make up the nuclei of atoms) melt - resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a Quark-Gluon Plasma.” By studying Quark-Gluon Plasma the scientists hope to learn more about the nature of the Strong Nuclear Force – the force that binds atomic nuclei together. Evans commented: "I now look forward to studying a tiny piece of what the universe was made of just a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.”

Editorial Comment: Smashing lead nuclei together may help scientists learn about the nature of matter, and the forces that hold it together, but they will not explain where lead comes from, nor explain the origin of the universe.

Creating a Quark-Gluon Plasma using existing matter and energy does not actually explain how quarks, gluons, nuclear forces, atoms or energy were created out of nothing. Furthermore, since the current Big Bang is only believed to have created hydrogen, heavy elements like lead were not supposed to have even been possible until a whole generation of stars had evolved and then blown up again. This lead destroying experiment does nothing to explain how hydrogen turns into lead, but it is a wonderful example of how much faith such big bangers are willing to put in dishonest extrapolations from little bangs. (Ref. physics, cosmology)